#9 Alien frens | A project that shook the NFT space
A deep-dive into Alien Frens
Alright, friends, this is the second letter of this year, and I will cover a few projects next. The speed at which the spaces move is insane, and you can not be on top of everything. The action on Twitter, Discord, and other communities would keep you busy all day, and you may miss out on specific projects. Nonetheless, I am trying to introduce some projects that I discovered or kept my attention.
First, let’s kick it off with Alien Frens.
Look at those cutie pies. Would YOU buy the art if you saw them without knowing anything about the artist or the NFT project itself?
Those little sweeties minted at 0.02 Eth, which was around 80 bucks. Seems like nothing, right? It was cheap compared to other projects and offered a good entry point for people outside of crypto. People who didn’t have significant monies on the table could mint the Alien Frens for only $80. A lower mint price makes NFT accessible to the general public and people who spend less on NFTs.
So what do we think of the art?
I am not an artist, but the art definitely fits the current narrative. It’s colorful, cute, and can be collected by anyone. On top of that, the rarity is easy to understand with four simple categories. The traits remind me of other cute projects such as Little Lemon Friends or Cool Cats.
You got common, semi-rare, rare, and ultra-rare. Of course, the rarer ones are more limited than the more common ones. Also, the colors signal the rarity, which is easy to distinguish.
So how did the project launch or catch my attention?
As with Little Lemon Friends, the project caught my attention through friends on my Twitter feed. They minted it, posted it on Twitter, and it went kinda viral; that is how it goes on Twitter and how projects get discovered through word-of-mouth.
Sometimes I pass on projects, and sometimes I buy.
As with this project and the NFT winter, when NFT prices were down significantly and people did not want to spend more on NFTs, I passed and didn’t bother to find out a month later that it was a costly mistake. But could I have known better? Maybe yes, but at that time, I didn’t bother. And this is how it goes in general within the crypto/NFT-space. You simply can’t catch every fish, and you need to be patient, have conviction in the project, and realize that you can’t celebrate at parties simultaneously.
So what have we learned of a project like Alien Frens?
I think you should always be curious, not neglect something or play it down. You should give new and unknown stuff a chance to try and learn more about it. Try to research the community, the founders, and the art. Also, with diversifying your NFT holding, you can spread your risk, so I would have been better of if I just bought one or two pieces instead of buying a lot of just one project since we don’t know where projects go. We don’t have every information. I have also seen projects abandoned by the founders and die down. More on that, I will post in another letter.
In general, there is asymmetrical information, and most likely the founder/project team knows more about the project itself, maybe they have deep connections to some famous people or influencers, have a strong voice in the community, or in general stuff you are not aware of when the project launches.
So who is the founder?
It’s Mason Crowe, and if you went on his homepage, https://www.masoncrowe.com/, you will find this description of him as he is a….
Cinematographer & Editor residing in Costa Mesa, CA.
projects range from Music Videos, Films, Commercials, Travel, Branded Content and more. My job is to bring your vision to life!
Before Alienfrens, he was involved in Starcats, where he was the artist and creator next to Justin Brown, who was responsible for the Marketing, and lastly, Metaseed Labs, who did the website and the developer work.
If you follow along, you can see that Metaseed Labs also helped out Alien Frens with the development, and Metaseed already has a name in the industry as they helped out other projects such as Letters by Vinnie Hager, a solid project that immerged from the Cool Cats community.
If you follow Starcats on Twitter, you can see that their hype also picked up, but Twitter is not as energetic as the one from Alienfrens.
So what does the project want to accomplish? (Roadmap)
They want to organize an in real life global tour, an exclusive merch collection, a comic book, and planet invasion, but what means planet invasion?!
Following their Twitter and discord, the planet invasion is a giveaway exclusive to their holders and each category of the NFT has different prices to win. For example, on January 15th, the winners will get the following prizes:
1 OLU - 1 Cool Cat
4 Lochias - 1 little Lemon friend
4 Femi - Kumo world
5 Xenos - Oculus Quest 2
This invasions bonus will go to OLU and will receive 1 Cryptomorie NFT.
If you own an OLU you have the chance to win a Cool Cat NFT which currently costs around 10 ETH (the cheapest floor piece NFT).
All in all, if you look at the roadmap, the milestones are very tight and on March 3rd, the roadmap 2.0 will be made official. I am excited to see it!
If you own an OLU, you have the chance to win a Cool Cat NFT, which currently costs around 10 ETH (the cheapest floor piece NFT).
All in all, if you look at the roadmap, the milestones are very tight, and on March 3rd, roadmap 2.0 will be made official. I am excited to see it!
Depending on the current situation, the Los Angeles party might be postponed, but it was planned to happen in February.
On January 30th, there will be the official merch drop (clothing).
On February 15th, there will be a thirty-pager comic coming out!
The roadmap also talks of a $FRENS token on February 28th, with further info on utility to be released.
The info that caught my attention is that they are planning on a v2 drop, and you can either keep your incubator for a V2 or hold on for future use cases.
So what supporters or collaborations do they have onboard?
Gary Vee
Every project is dreaming of getting the attention of Gary Vaynerchuk as he has a massive follower base in the millions. When he goes into something, the whole industry knows, and this is where the attention comes into play. The project exploded after Gary Vee got into the project and bought 40 pieces and a rare one. Then, he gave away some of those Alien Frens for free via his social media channel on Twitter.
A Collaboration with noone less than Ozzy Osbourne
There comes another huge giant who is just getting started in this space. Ozzy is bringing his own collection out there, called CryptoBatz, and they announced a collaboration with Alien Frens.
A project that’s been on the market for barely a month and has already seen two noteworthy announcements is simply crushing it.
Also, Alien Frens is playing on par with big giant NFT project CyberKongz in terms of collaborations, which is already longer on the market though and has a current floor price of 7 ETH.
How is the Alien Frens operating differently?
Alien Frens truly knows how to create hype without revealing everything at once. The community is truly unique and is very friendly and helpful. They onboarded many newcomers to NFTs through their accessible mint price and are here to stay.
This is by far one of the fastest fastest-growing projects I have ever seen.
My personal take and if I’d enter at current prices
Currently, the project has already taken off, and my style is to enter when it is cheaper than the current floor price of 2.7 ETH. So I would wait until speculation dies down and buy if I wanted to join. You should always be cautious when purchasing for higher prices since it can go further down.
My personal mistake with buying NFTs was that I always wanted to buy cheap NFTs or newer projects, but I learned that you should follow blue-chip projects with a proven track record of achieving success. If the prices came to an entry point that makes sense for you in terms of money, you could enter.
Always do your research and be aware that we are in a speculative environment.
There might be points I missed covering in this letter, and if so, please let me know in the comments below. ❤
Before we do end today’s letter, please consider subscribing if you’re eager to learn more about upcoming NFT projects and about the space in general.
Great insights. Thanks for sharing. Would be interesting to hear your opinion which upcoming projects have high potential and why.
Awesome write up! Very thorough analysis, I look forward to read more:)